Runaways
by JoBelle
Summary: The first time Samantha Spade ran away from home she was thirteen and her mother, coming out of a week long binge actually noticed and came after her. The second time Samantha left she was seventeen, and it wasn't so much running away as moving out.


Title: Runaways

Author's Notes: You only need to be familiar with Without a Trace to follow this fic but watching the others of course makes it more fun :) If you are familiar with them please futz with the time line so as to make it all possible :)

Spoilers: **Without A Trace** through season 7, **Silk Stalkings** 4x01 and 4x02 that Poppy Montgomery guest starred in, **Higher Ground** General, **Criminal Minds** through Season 4

When Samantha opened her eyes after her impromptu nap it was still Sunday afternoon but now the golden light from the windows had faded to silver tracks on the window panes of the seventh story apartment. The rain was falling lightly, her eyes tracked the drops progress down the glass and if she listened hard enough she could almost hear the drum of it over the bass of a stereo emanating from down the hall. Her first thought was for Finn but he was still asleep on her chest, chubby baby fist curled next to his chubby baby cheek in sweet slumber. The soft down on his head had brightened to gold as he neared his first year and Samantha buried her nose there for a moment inhaling his clean baby smell. She wondered if her mother had been like this with her and Emily, she supposed she must have after all it was much easier to love a baby than angry teenage girls. Her gaze flicked to the door and then back to Finn with a small wry smile.

Sam roused herself out of the bed to go lay her son down in his playpen still tucked away in the corner of the room. She stood for a long moment watching him, hoping that he would never feel the way she had so many times as a child, like a hindrance, like one more worry on a pair of overloaded shoulders. No, Finn would know he was loved and wanted. She would make sure of it.

The music down the hall stopped, but the noise level did not recede as voices were raised in frustration and shrill teenage anger. A door slammed in aggravation spurred her into action. Sam tucked a baby monitor into her pocket and slipped out the door, padding down the hall in socked feet past Finn's nursery and met Jack standing dumbfounded at the other side of Hanna's door.

"What's going on?" She questioned, laying a hand on his arm that vibrated with the tension of the fight he'd just had with his oldest.

"Hanna, she's..." Jack shook his head as if to clear it "She's packing her things, she says she's leaving."

"What? She can't!"

"I know that, and you know that but she...I... she doesn't want to hear anything from me now. Could you..." he left his request open ended but Samantha knew what he was asking of her. His daughter could not hear the concern and fear for her in his voice she was too wrapped up in whatever new way she felt she had been wronged by her father. Samantha sighed, and things had been going so well in the last month and a half, she'd really felt like they'd all managed to find a way to make things work, Hanna had started to forgive her dad and if not accept at least tolerate Sam. Samantha had really thought they'd turned a corner.

She nodded to Jack. "Yeah, I'll see what I can do." She promised, laying a hand on his chest and pushing him towards the living room. For a moment it looked like once he got there he'd start barricading the door but he just collapsed onto their couch looking lost and forlorn. He ran his hands through his hair that had gotten so long recently and Samantha looked away. She hated seeing him look so defeated. Squaring her shoulders she knocked on the teen's door.

"Go away!" came the expected response.

"Hanna, it's me." She called through the wood. "I'd like to talk with you for a minute if you'll let me."

"And what if I don't like what you have to say?" was the retort. Sam stifled a grin, Hanna was more like her father than either realized.

"You won't know unless you let me try will you?" She countered.

The music stopped again and Sam heard the door unlock in the sudden silence.

She entered the room and found Hanna steadfastly folding clothes into a suitcase with her back to the door.

"I ran away a couple times." She offered the girl in the pink hoodie and torn jeans.

"I'm not running away. I'm going to go finish the school year at my friend Jessica's house. Her parents don't mind and they've got an extra room."

"Well I'm glad you have a backup plan in case this doesn't work out but don't you think you owe it to your dad to give him a chance to think about things from your side of the argument?"

"He's not going to do that. He never does that! He acts like I'm a criminal and all my friends are suspects he can interrogate in that tiny little room in your offices!"

"He loves you Hanna." Samantha offered, perching on the edge of the double bed ducking her head to catch the girl's eyes. "Which is more than I had when I ran away. I hadn't seen my dad in years and my mom well she was too embroiled in her own social life to even notice I was gone."

Hanna's fingers stilled on the t shirt she was folding.

Samantha sensing she had caught her audience continued to speak. "Oh the first time, when I was thirteen she came after me. She wasn't drunk all the time back then and when she dragged me off that bus stop I thought maybe now she'd change. Now she'd love me and hear me instead of acting like I was just something she had to get through. The second time though, the second time she was on day two of a bender when I left that didn't end for two more days after I'd been gone which is probably why no one found me." Samantha smiled wryly, thinking about how many teens they'd returned to franticly worried parents because they'd caught them in that key forty-eight hour period.

"I was seventeen that time and I didn't see my mother for two years after that. She'd let me down, she'd let my sister down and she didn't even care enough to try to make it up to us, not like your Dad right now Hanna. He cares. He cares so much he can't see straight because of it. And he sees you in trouble like I was, like so many of the kids we help every day are and he doesn't know how to help every time but he tries anyway even if his methods are a little off the wall. He loves you and Kate so much but he doesn't know everything, so he makes mistakes Hanna. All he wants is for you to be safe and happy but his priorities are in that order while yours are probably focused on the happy and not so much the safe."

Hanna gave her a small smile, her fingers twisted in the fabric of the t shirt she still held in her hands. "What happened to you? When you ran away the second time I mean?" The girl asked.

The first time Samantha Spade ran away from home she was thirteen and her mother, coming out of a weeklong binge actually noticed and came after her. Sam thought that would be a turning point for them. Less than a year later her mom hooked up with the man that would change her and Emily's lives forever and Samantha realized that her mom hadn't grown up as much as she thought she had. The second time Samantha left she was seventeen, and it wasn't so much running away as moving out. Of course she didn't tell her mother, but she doubted the woman would have listened anyway and by that time Emily was already off at state college so there was no one to stop her and no one to come after her.

Sam had the brains for college; she just didn't have the right attitude for high school. And so six months short of graduation and her birthday she stepped off the bus 50 minutes from Miami - that was as far as the fare she'd scrounged together could get her. So there she was underaged, with no degree and hardly any money in a foreign state, but at least it was warm out. She couldn't get over November in Florida with its 80 degree days and 65 degree nights.

Sam figured she'd sleep on the beach, maybe get a job waitressing. That was where she met Junie. They both worked the night shift 11pm to 7am at the diner by the beach and they immediately disliked each other. Junie called Samantha 'Angel' from the first day because of her round cheeks and long blond hair. The nickname irked Samantha to the point where she cut it all off and dyed it brown, ostensibly so she'd be less recognizable if her mother had actually reported her missing. The name still stuck, and Samantha Spade became just plain Angel. Then Junie somehow managed to get both herself and Sam fired. Samantha was sure that that had been the worst day of her life; she had never felt so desperate and hopeless standing there amidst the crowd of impatient tourists and broken dishes. Later that night Junie brought Sam half of what she'd made panhandling. Junie taught Samantha the ropes of 'living rough' as the girl liked to call it - the best places to ask for money, where to get the most out of what they scrounged together, what shelters asked the fewest questions and who the sick pervs were to stay away from. Junie was sort of like a big sister to Sam during those months. She looked out for Samantha in ways that Emily never had.

Sam had gotten a bad feeling when the guy approached them in the bar, but Junie liked his tattoos. She had a thing for guys with ink. She had a thing for guys who looked dangerous in general. Sam thought it might have been because Junie's dad looked like any other middle class guy in his forties with a beer gut from Ohio: Normal. He didn't look like the type of bastard who smacked his daughter around after a few beers. Didn't look like he'd knocked her teeth out at seven, broken her arm at eleven, had come after her with a wrench the evening Junie left home for good. Junie had told Sam all this the first time she and Samantha had gotten really drunk together a few months back and Sam had found a photo of Junie's family with her dad folded carefully out. She never spoke of it again after that, no matter how drunk they got. Sam had worried since then that Junie's taste for danger and innate brassiness would land her in trouble. She wouldn't know until the next day just exactly how much.

When the cop flashed his badge at her Samantha knew something was wrong. When the nice woman from Night Moves, the shelter she and Junie had stayed at the week before, headed her off at the pass Sam knew something bad had happened to Junie.

"You never said anything about being a cop!" She accused, all the piss and bluster seventeen years could muster overlaid on top of real panic, with hints of betrayal and fear.

"That's not important." The woman, Rita, glossed over, moving straight to Junie.

"She's dead isn't she?" Samantha demanded and when Rita confirmed it Samantha literally felt her knees buckle as an overwhelming wave of isolation crashed over her. Loneliness in a way she'd never felt before. When she first left home she'd still had the hope that she'd be okay, then she'd met Junie and things hadn't been perfect but they'd been better. Now she had no one, no one in the whole wide world who gave a damn, no one who'd come looking for her. She felt her face crumble and before she knew it she was sobbing, sobbing on Rita's shoulder like her heart would break and for the most part it already had.

Sgt. Rita Lance of the Palm Beach Police Dept held on to the girl who was all skin and bones beneath the baggy clothing. She knew those tears. She knew them because she'd cried them herself at seven years old beside a bathtub full of her father's blood and brain matter. Rita knew the grief wasn't just for Junie who had died in a way that disgusted Rita to her very core but for Angel herself who was suddenly all alone in the world. Rita just held on and let her cry for a few moments. She shook her head minutely at Chris as he raised his eyebrows at her. No, she had this.

They took Angel back to the station and got her statement. While the girl was down in the cafeteria with one of the uniforms, Rita sat on the edge of Chris' desk. She'd been working on her detachment in the last few months, had gotten pretty good at letting the callers go after she hung up with them at Night Moves but this girl, this girl struck a chord in Rita she couldn't deny. She wanted to help her.

Chris, astute observer of the human species and particularly versed in the silent language of one Rita Lee Lance, could tell that his partner was well on her way to finding a new cause. He only hoped that she wouldn't be too disappointed if she couldn't save this girl too. Some people were simply too far gone once they made it to the streets.

Luck for once seemed to be on Rita Lance and Samantha Spade's side in the form of Cotton Dunn Rita and Chris' sometime informant who appeared, like the annoying gnat he was, at the most importune moment. Except his appearance turned out to be very fortunate as he found Angel not only a job, but a place to stay off the streets that wasn't a shelter or foster care. Samantha had played her age very close to the vest and Rita finally just let it lie. She knew too well what the system could be like.

Rita made it a habit to check in with the girl at least once a day in the next week until Angel, as Sam was still going by, called her on it that Friday.

"I know what you're doing." The girl said in that slightly defiant lilt she had. Rita had paused on the phone, eyes going wide though Angel couldn't see. "I'm not going to bolt if that's what you're worried about."

Rita smiled, shook her head, laughed into the phone. "Alright. Well, if you're planning on sticking around how about I treat you to dinner tonight then?" She suggested.

Samantha paused on the other end of the line. "Well, I just got my first paycheck today. I was planning on celebrating at Gibbs'" She named a popular bar that she and Junie had frequented up to the night that Junie had died. "But I guess if you're paying…" Samantha trailed off and Rita could hear the mischievous smile in her voice.

"I'll swing by and pick you up after work." Rita promised her cop instincts twanging like a highly tuned pitch fork.

"Listen Angel," Rita began later that night after dinner, voice just as casual as a moment before. "it might be a good idea to stay clear of Gibbs and that whole area until this investigation is complete." The two of them had ordered Chinese food and eaten in at Rita's apartment instead of going out. Rita had obviously been working up to mentioning this. Angel opened her mouth, clearly about to argue, about to tell Rita that she had no say in how she lived her life! Then the realization of the reasoning behind Rita's words dawned on her.

"You mean in case the creep who killed Junie goes back there?" Samantha's voice rose in pitch with each word. She hadn't even thought of the idea that he might come back there. But why not? For all she knew it might be his regular bar. "Why aren't you staking it out? Don't you want to catch this freak?!" She demanded. "The news is saying he's a serial killer! That Junie wasn't his first. That he whipped his victims and burned them with cigarettes before he strangled them to death! What's taking you so long to catch this monster?!"

"Angel," Rita's voice was calm but firm, interrupting the girl's mounting tirade "We're doing everything we can and yes we have people at Gibbs' on the lookout for a two toned Rolls but we have no idea what this perp might look like. It just might not be such a great idea for you to go there, or anywhere, on your own for a while." Rita stressed. Rita could hear the rebellion building in Angel's head, could almost taste her fear and the need to run that was welling up in the girl but Rita knew that if she went back out onto the streets they would lose her forever. To this creep or to someone else with a needle or a pipe and Rita had already lost enough people in her life.

"Angel, listen to me. We're going to get this bastard," the fervency in her tone surprised even Rita. "He's going to pay for what he did to Junie and to all those other girls. He's not going to do this again, we won't give him the chance. We're planning a sting operation, replacing all the street girls with undercover police women, we're going to get him and it's going to be soon." Rita promised, not even knowing where her words were coming from. Lipschitz was never going to be able to swing that sort of manpower. But she knew even as she considered how impossible it was that she'd do everything in her power to get it done.

"And what about the next guy like him, Rita? Or the next one? What about the next girl who goes missing that no one ever identifies? Who's going to help her?" Samantha's voice was hopeless, drained and small her eyes huge and haunted in a face too pale and too thin.

"We will." Rita hesitated, she was well aware that street kids didn't like to be touched for a whole slew of reasons but she looked so young and hopeless in that moment that Rita pulled the girl into an embrace. "Chris and I will. Our Captain will, and even people like you Angel. People who have the courage to stand up and testify about what they saw and not let guys like this get away with what they do, Angel. That's who."

"Samantha." the girl corrected pulling back. "My name is Samantha, not Angel. Samantha Spade."

Rita gave her a lopsided smile. "That's a good name Samantha Spade." She reached out and stroked a lock of the girl's short hair back behind her ear, this gesture more than the hug made the breath catch in Sam's throat - it was so like and so unlike her mother's. It was something she wished the woman was capable of; looking beyond her own needs to see Samantha.

"I just turned eighteen two days ago." She confessed.

"Happy Independence Day." Rita replied softly. Sam's smile was wry

"You ever see The Maltese Falcon, Samantha Spade?" Rita asked trying to break the mood. Sam was about to answer in the affirmative, she had seen it many a time growing up with her mom and Emily, but she found herself shaking her head no. Rita got up and popped the tape in. The two sat in silence for a few hours, reveling in the normal act of watching a movie on a Friday night with a friend.

The next time Samantha saw Rita she was standing at her door sporting a shiner the size and colour of storm clouds back home before a wicked winter downpour. Chris hung back, eyes trained on Rita protectively, his arm in a sling. Samantha wondered what had happened to leave the two of them battered so badly. Rita's smile eclipsed her bruised eye when she spotted Samantha.

"We got him!"

"No." Samantha didn't know why that was her immediate response, disbelief. Rita had been so sure, so certain they would catch the sick son of a bitch but that had been weeks ago! Samantha had stopped jumping at every sound in the night thinking it was him but now a whole world of facing that animal in courtroom, of the possibility of him escaping and coming after her suddenly opened up before her. "No!" Sam repeated, taking a step back into her tiny studio apartment. She liked where her life was going, she was starting to feel safe, hell Cotton had even talked her into getting her GED and maybe taking some classes at the community college in a few months! She couldn't do all that as the prosecution's star witness!

Rita leaned forward and took the girl's arm "We also found Junie's real name. June Devlin. Her mother lives in New York with Junie's brother and two sisters."

"What about her Dad?" Samantha immediately asked.

"They're divorced. He's been in prison for assault for the last four months." Rita replied, watching the spark of triumph light in Samantha's eyes at her news.

"Her mom's got a broken leg right now and is working two jobs so it's hard for her to get down here. I know it's a lot to ask of you Ang...Samantha, and I could have it all shipped up there but I was hoping you would deliver Junie's ashes and her personal effects to her mother if Cotton can spare you for a few days."

"What about... I mean, don't I have to stick around to testify?" Samantha spluttered.

Rita shook her head slowly. "He's dead." Rita's eyes were fierce as she made her pronouncement, they flicked from Samantha to Chris and back swiftly. Samantha knew in that moment how Rita had gotten that shiner and why Chris' arm was in that sling. Chris' eyes were focused on his partner as she delivered the news and Samantha could see the concern and love for her shining in them.

"...so there won't be a trial." Rita had been talking right through Samantha's little space out she realized.

"Yes." She interrupted. "I'll take Junie back home to her mother."

"Rita drove me to the airport and that was the last time I saw her." Samantha said regretfully.

"Why? What happened?" Hanna asked.

Sam gave a half laugh thinking about those first two years in New York. "Life I guess. I never went back to Florida and pretty soon two years had gone by and I hadn't thought to call her and say thank you for what she did but she saved my life as sure as if she'd knocked me out of the way of a bullet."

"But you did try?" Hanna needed to know.

"Yeah I did. I called the Palm Beach Police Department after I joined the force but no one would tell me anything. Finally I got a hold of her captain and he told me that Rita had resigned from the force. He wouldn't tell me why, or where she'd gone though."

"I bet you could find her now." Hanna suggested, sitting forward. "You and Dad have access to all those databases and stuff."

Samantha laughed. "You know I hadn't thought of that. It probably wouldn't be fair to her to use my FBI resources to look her up though."

"I still think she'd like to hear from you. To know you're doing well, that she made a difference in your life."

Samantha shot Hanna a pointed look, which made the teen slowly drop her eyes to the side.

Sam had never forgotten Rita and had done her best to pay forward the kindness the detective had shown to her. One night on patrol she picked up a troubled teen, who reminded her very much of herself at that age. Instead of turning the girl over to Social Services Samantha called Peter Scarborough an ex-boyfriend of hers who was running a special school in Seattle for teens who were considered at risk and pled Shelby's case to both Peter and later the judge.

Shelby's name change came on her eighteenth birthday a final divorce from the family she'd lost six years prior. Shelby became Jennifer Jareau who graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in criminology in three years. That and glowing character references from Samantha Spade and Peter Scarborough as well as several of her professors landed her a spot at the FBI training academy and later a spot on the BAU Team.

Shelby had kept in loose email contact with Samantha since joining the bureau and had written with the news of her pregnancy right around the time that Sam gave birth. They were growing closer lately trading photos of Finn and Hank. Sam thought about how nice it was knowing Shelby was safe, that she was happy, that she'd made a difference in the girl's life. Maybe she would look up Rita and then just casually happen to run into her if they happened to have a case that took them near her…

"Look, Sam." Hanna interrupted the blonde's musings. "I hear what you're trying to tell me. I get that it's not safe out there and okay my dad might have reason to worry but does that give him the right to act like I'm a baby? Like I don't have eyes and ears and brains in my head? I was messing up when I was living with mom yes, but I'm not like that now. Why can't he see that?" She demanded, frustration coloring her tone.

"He's trying Hanna, I promise you he's trying." Samantha replied, a little surprised herself at how true the words were, Jack had come a long way in the pig-headed department in the last year. "But you have to try too. If you want him to see things from your perspective then try looking at them from his for a change."

Hanna sat down on the edge of the bed and was silent for a few moments, long curly brown hair falling to curtain her face. Finally she looked back up at Sam with eyes so like her father's and nodded. "Yeah I guess I can try that."

Sam smiled down at the girl and pushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Thank you."

Hanna nodded with a little shrug.

When Samantha entered the living room she found it empty so she headed back to their bedroom finding Jack standing over Finn, fussing with his blankets. "They're so much easier when they can't talk back." He grumbled, looking at her over his shoulder.

Sam smiled and snaked her arms around his waist, leaning her chin on his shoulder as they stood silently and watched their boy sleep.

"So, uh…" Jack coughed uncomfortably. "When you sat down with the monitor in your pocket must've pushed the on button by accident and it started transmitting." He admitted. "I came in here cause I heard voices and then I realized what it was…" He turned in her arms giving her a hesitant look.

Sam's gaze was even as she looked back. "I guess that means you listened in?" she gave him a smirk and rolled her eyes a little.

Jack colored even more and shrugged.

Sam shook her head and let him pull her closer into his embrace.

"I'm glad you made it through all that." He murmured into her hair. "I'm glad you found people to watch your back and I- I'm proud of the person you've become Samantha Spade."

Sam pulled back to smile brilliantly up at him. "I seem to have a knack for finding people to watch my back." She replied, giving him a squeeze.

Jack returned the smile and leaned down to brush her lips with his, a quiet kiss of thanksgiving for everything that could've stopped them from being where they were and who they were right at this instant and everything that hadn't.

"Think she'll stay now?" Jack asked after a few moments of silence.

"I think she will if you'll meet her halfway." Samantha replied.

Jack sighed and nodded. "Maybe I have been flying off the handle a little more often than was warranted with her."

"She just wants to be heard, Jack. That's all anybody really needs: Someone to listen."

"I'm trying, Sam. I'm trying"

"That's all anyone can ask then." She made small circles on his back with her fingers and closed her eyes pressing closer into his embrace with a sigh.


End file.
